No, this isn’t going to be some whimpering tale of unexamined privilege, of someone who never noticed that his kind ruled the world, and thus never saw oppression. Sorry. This isn’t ignorance which you can dismiss. These are uncomfortable truths from someone whose credentials, though tarnished beyond recognition, can’t be ignored.
You can hate me, if you want to just participate in ignorance yourself. You can treat me like an enemy. Or you could listen to me. Because, like it or not–I’m not wrong.
This is how colonization tends to work:
A small group of disadvantaged colonists arrives in new (to them) territory. If we’re lucky, they arrive somewhere that doesn’t already have indigenous people, and so the story doesn’t begin with the slaughter of innocents. The plucky, scared colonists set up lives and try to exist and build a way of life.
Eventually, they reach a level of technology and agriculture which permits then to have an identity beyond mere survival.
And then they become powerful enough to rule, and to persecute others.
And then those others, eventually, stand up and fight for equality.
…no, just kidding. After a long time of persecution, if the persecuted get power, they very very seldom decide to forgive and forget. Why should they? How could they?
They might start seeking equality, but the oppressed haven’t even been given a chance to know what “equality” would feel like. So they fight to be strong enough to be safe, to be heard, to be present, to never go back.
And some of them, enough of them, fight for the only place where that’s really possible: they fight to take over.
It’s a fucking bloodbath.
Welcome to modern fandom.
